More On The Pace Of Change
For those who can’t get enough after Wendy’s piece, there’s more available here. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is actually putting these speeches online, available for free and for fun. Their technology talks are pretty potent stuff. None more so than Ray Kurzweil’s machine-gun delivery on the machine-gun pace of technology change.
A little context about Ray Kurzweil, for those who aren’t familiar with him. He’s …all … over … the …net, so you can find more easily. I bumped into his work about a year and a half ago, grabbing a copy of ‘The Singularity Is Near’. The talk I linked to above is a 20 minute compression of three of the chapters in that book.
Nanotechnology is coming at us like a freight train, as is the rest of technology. Talking to my wife last night, I said that I thought that the next 25 years would hold more change than the last 125. She looked at me indulgently, as might some of you, (she’s a bit smarter and a lot more skeptical than I, and muttered something like ‘I see, more change than since the era of the telegraph’) and I may be wrong in the sense that it might be 30 rather than 25. But if you look at what’s being worked on right now in laboratories, shops and R&D facilities, I don’t think you’ll come away with anything other than a sense of wonder at the world we’ll be living in soon.
It’s important to note that you have to keep a bit of a critical eye when reading through some of the literature of futurology. A lot of writing about The Singularity and keeping senescence at bay is as much science fiction as it is science. But even keeping to the straight and narrow path of extrapolating from present progress can leave one a bit breathless. As was Kurzweil at the end of the speech linked to above.
And I may have mentioned this before (but not more than 100 times), but it is clear to me that governments everywhere will have to keep a close eye on this change. Well, that is what they’re asking us to do here at Blindside… Governments will be charged with delivering new services, regulating new technologies, managing a transition that is likely to be as disruptive as the change from agriculture to industry, and cope with the social effects of a new way of organising the lives of individuals and organisations. Whether it is in fact 25 years out (or 30 or even 50) it will make the challenges facing UK government today look like a golden age of tranquility.
Read Wendy’s piece linked to in the previous post. Watch Ray Kurzweil’s talk. Let me know if you think I’m exaggerating.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:31 am
There sxeems general agreement that it was sf writer (and math prof) Vernor Vinge who came up with the term “Singularity” - here is his original 1993 paper outlining it. Vinge has written a number of book speculating about life post-Singularity, as have many other sf writers. As Charlie Stross and some others explained to me for Big Brother takes a controlling interesting in chips (Guardian), once Vinge had proposed it, every sf writer dabbling in the future had to deal with it (like faster-than-light travel before it). ISTR that Stross is the only writer who tried to show what it would be like living through the Singularity itself. The article linked to there was based on Vinge’s talk at CFP 2006, and represents the thinking he put into the techological environment in which his most recent book, Rainbows End, is set. It’s worth reading just for the picture of what life might be like with all these technologies deployed - ubiquitous networked sensors and computers, life extension, virtual worlds, etc.
wg
September 24th, 2007 at 11:21 am
(Blindside thinks I’ve submitted this comment, but it’s not appearing, and I am baffled. So I’m adding to it and posting it again. Sorry if it shows up twice.)
There seems general agreement that it was sf writer (and math prof) Vernor Vinge who came up with the term “Singularity” - here is his original 1993 paper outlining it. Vinge has written a number of book speculating about life post-Singularity, as have many other sf writers. As Charlie Stross and some others explained to me for Big Brother takes a controlling interesting in chips (Guardian), once Vinge had proposed it, every sf writer dabbling in the future had to deal with it (like faster-than-light travel before it). ISTR that Stross is the only writer who tried to show what it would be like living through the Singularity itself. The article linked to there was based on Vinge’s talk at CFP 2006, and represents the thinking he put into the techological environment in which his most recent book, Rainbows End, is set. It’s worth reading just for the picture of what life might be like with all these technologies deployed - ubiquitous networked sensors and computers, life extension, virtual worlds, etc.
However, one thing life extensionists seem to me to be ignoring is the fact that many of today’s 20-30 generation are in fact unhealthier than today’s 50-60yos, and I’m not talking about comparing couch potatoes with fitness fanatics. Predictions are in the US that this generation will have shorter lives than their parents (and be less wealthy).
Still, I suppose I share the desire to live long enough to find out what happens.
wg